It's been a typical Queensland summer here, hot & humid. We were lucky enough to spend 6 weeks of it in the UK with the family, but had to come back & face the heat in the new year. I have just started to get back into my lampworking again, I have my next show on the 9th/10th of March in Lampwork Bead Addicts Artists Limelight Facebook group, so if you'd like to come along & see my latest beads, make sure you join the group! This particular group is one for mixed media, so you will find lots of beautiful treasures up for grabs, not just beads & jewellery. Here is a sneak peek of some of my beads that will be up for grabs :) .

In the tradition of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", I sent my husband Eddie off this morning to the local metal recyclers with the instructions to bring me home some copper that I can use in my jewellery. He brought home these 2 pieces of copper pipe, I am planning some pendants & earrings with them & many more when they all get cut up.

I tried out one of the new Double Helix silver glasses called Iaso the other day. Apparently you can get a lovely metallic copper effect all over from it, I tried a couple of things but this bead probably had the coolest effect. Jed from Double Helix has kindly done a video to help people with how to work this new glass as it seems to be quite different to the other Double Helix reduction glasses. What I did was I started off doing exactly what Jed did in his video, with a tiny reduction flame (lengthen the candles from neutral by about 2-3mm) passing the bead actually through the end of the candles right down close to the end of the torch & letting it cool after each pass. But everytime I passed the bead through the flame again after the first time, part of the reduction got erased. So I ended up with stripes of reduction, in different colours, some parts overlapping. There were also some parts that didn't seem to have any reduction at all. So then I turned my reduction flame up a little bit so the candles are about 2 inches long & twirled the bead in the flame about half way up (approx 5-6 inches from the end of the torch) & then took it out to let it cool. I did this about 5-10 times & I could see the red/copper colours coming out but it had a metallic marbled effect. So this is what the finished bead looked like, the second photo shows the metallic effect better than the first one, now i just need to see if it is repeatable.

I've been busy making christmas gifts for both my Etsy shop & other places I sell & as presents for my family & friends. Hope you enjoy looking at them!

Have been very busy selling on Facebook lately, here are a few of the beads & sets that I've sold through the FB auction sites. Hope you enjoy the eye candy!

I have been making a lot of different stuff since I came home from the Gathering, these are the latest. A fellow trivia player asked if I could make a cross for her sister who is very religious, so I tried making a couple in reducing silver glass & this is what I came up with. She liked them & ended up buying both, looks like I should try making some more! Laying them half down for the photos gives the best pic of the oil slick colours.

Had a great trip to the US to The Gathering, now to set up my new torch, make some beads & shells using my new glass (boro) & get everything listed in my Etsy shop so I can sell it!